#570: 100 Terabit Smart Switches: What You Need to Know

Thank you to Cisco for sponsoring my trip to the Cisco AI Lab in San Jose.

In this deep dive into the future of data center networking, we sit down to explore the massive shifts happening in AI infrastructure. We discuss the rollout of new 100 terabit smart switches and firewalls powered by the Cisco Silicon One G300 chip, alongside the highly anticipated NVIDIA Spectrum 6. Discover the critical debate between Ethernet and InfiniBand for scaling AI clusters, the complexities of co-packaged optics (CPO) versus linear packaged optics (LPO), and how agentic AI and tools like Claude are revolutionizing legacy C code refactoring. From managing data center power
constraints to enforcing security policies directly on DPUs, this conversation covers the hardware and software transformations you need to know to stay ahead in network engineering.

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// MENU //
0:00 - Coming Up
0:42 - Introduction
01:05 - Recap of Announcements from Cisco Live
03:19 - 1.6 Terabyts Client Optics
04:27 - Hyperscalers and Neo-Clouds
05:13 - Cisco and Nvidia working together
05:39 - Scale Across
06:43 - Announcements from Nvidia GTC 2026
09:15 - Firewalls and AI Clusters
10:36 - The Future, Growth and Innovation
11:53 - Why have a Cisco Switch and a Nvidia Switch?
14:33 - Operating Systems on the Switches
16:42 - Infiniband vs Ethernet in the Data Centre
17:52 - Other Announcements from GTC
19:35 - Concerns around Data Centres
21:22 - Agentic AI in Data Centres
22:44 - Evolution of Soltware in Data Centres
25:07 - The Future of Vibe Coding
29:13 - Updates In the Routing Circles
30:43 - Open Source AI
32:11 - A view into the Future
35:14 - Outro

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Disclaimer: This video is for educational purposes only.
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